J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

ISBN 978-1-84976-386-8
J.M.W. Turner > 1836-47 Modern painter > Venice, Austria and Southern Germany ... > Venice: The Bacino, Canale della ... > Artwork

Joseph Mallord William Turner Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Bacino from the Canale della Grazia, Venice, at Evening, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal and the Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's) 1840

Joseph Mallord William Turner, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Bacino from the Canale della Grazia, Venice, at Evening, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal and the Campanile of San Marco (St Mark's)’ 1840
Joseph Mallord William Turner 1775–1851
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Bacino from the Canale della Grazia, Venice, at Evening, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal and the Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) 1840
D32150
Turner Bequest CCCXVI 13
Pencil and watercolour on pale grey-white wove paper, 230 x 305 mm
Partial watermark ‘72’
Blind-stamped with Turner Bequest monogram towards bottom left
Inscribed by John Ruskin in blue ink ‘1558’ bottom right
Stamped in black ‘CCCXVI 13’ bottom right
Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856
The Turner scholar C.F. Bell annotated Finberg’s 1909 Inventory entry (‘Entrance to the Grand Canal. The Salute and Dogana on the left, the Campanile, &c., on the right’): ‘from the Riva della Cà di Dio looking west, sunset’.1 In fact, the viewpoint is rather further south, across the Bacino and just off the west front of the monastery buildings south of the church on the Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore in the right foreground, at the entrance to the Canale della Grazia; Tate D32156 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 19) shows the scene from further back, along the channel.
The prospect ranges north-west and north, with the Salute and Dogana silhouetted against the evening glow towards the left, the campanile of San Moisè at the centre and the campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) and the Molo front of the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) on the skyline towards the right. The view is rather laterally compressed; compare the detailed 1819 pencil drawing in the Milan to Venice sketchbook (Tate D14436–D14437; Turner Bequest CLXXV 63a–64). A sense of depth and distance is generated by the loose forms of boats at each side in the foreground.
Similarly generalised, atmospheric evening effects are seen in technically related nearby views (Tate D32151–D32152; Turner Bequest CCCXVI 14, 15), and on pages in the contemporary Grand Canal and Giudecca sketchbook (Tate D32130, D32133; Turner Bequest CCCXV 14, 17).2 Andrew Wilton has characterised such studies as ‘rich in colour but extremely economical of means, evoking the wide level waters of the Bacino di San Marco with a minimum of touches.’3
Lindsay Stainton has suggested that here Turner’s ‘aim seems to be above all with evoking atmospheric effects ... [such as] the rich glow of twilight – so that the broadly handled, almost schematised, treatment of architectural features is deliberately allusive’,4 while Ian Warrell has described D32150–D32152: ‘As a linked sequence, they deftly recreate the graduated nuances of the failing light, using the landmarks nearest the Bacino to chart the onset of twilight, passing from a washed-out pink to a sombre lilac and finally becoming a more solid blue.’5
1
Undated MS note by Bell (died 1966) in copy of Finberg 1909, Prints and Drawings Room, Tate Britain, II, p.1019.
2
See also Warrell 2003, p.209.
3
Wilton 1982, p.60.
4
Stainton 1985, p.57; see also Warrell 1995, p.100.
5
Warrell 2003, p.209.
Technical notes:
There is a ruled pencil line above the slightly irregular bottom edge, perhaps made in relation to mounting the work for display in the 1930s.
Finberg had distinguished Tate D32148–D32152 (Turner Bequest CCCXVII 11–15), all 1840 Venetian subjects, as being on ‘slightly yellowish coarse paper’.1 While technical examination has since shown that the first two are on a different buff paper, the present work is one of four contemporary sheets noted by Ian Warrell as ‘Pale grey-white wove [paper], watermarked: “C S”, followed by laurel leaves, and mould numbers’,2 namely Tate D32150–D32153 (Turner Bequest CCCXVI 13–16). He characterised it as an ‘Italian paper, probably made in the Brescia region’.3
1
Finberg 1909, II, p.1019; see also Finberg 1930, p.174, Wilton 1974, p.154, Wilton 1975, pp.138, 143, Wilton 1976, p.148, Wilton 1977, p.81, Wilton 1982, p.60, Wilton 1983, p.287, and Stainton 1985, p.57.
2
‘Appendix: The papers used for Turner’s Venetian Watercolours’ (1840, section 7) in Warrell 2003, p.259.
3
Ibid.; see also Bower 1999, pp.111, 113.
Verso:
Blank; stamped in black ‘CCCXVI – 13’ over Turner Bequest monogram; inscribed in pencil ‘D32150’ bottom right.

Matthew Imms
July 2018

How to cite

Matthew Imms, ‘Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana across the Bacino from the Canale della Grazia, Venice, at Evening, with the Entrance to the Grand Canal and the Campanile of San Marco (St Mark’s) 1840 by Joseph Mallord William Turner’, catalogue entry, July 2018, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours, Tate Research Publication, December 2019, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-santa-maria-della-salute-and-the-dogana-across-the-bacino-r1196986, accessed 22 July 2024.